It's been billed as perhaps the worst house for sale in Australia, and as for truth in real estate advertising, it doesn't get more truthful than this.

"Avert your eyes before the horror burns holes in your retinas," the ad announces. "Bring your vomit bucket. Prepare to burn your clothes and take a detox shower. The is not a B grade movie. This is an A grade dump."

"You have been warned."

Rather than put buyers off, the colourful ad – and discount price – has resulted in this house in the Perth suburb of Kelmscott selling just a day after it was listed.

"The ad went up at 11pm on Wednesday and it was under offer by 11am the next day," agent Rob Caruso, of Perth Property Solutions, said.

"What I've been telling the copious number of callers is that the best offer wins. I've had as little as $50 to a cash offer of $240,000 [where it sold]."

The suburb's median price is $325,000, well below the $537,267 for Perth overall, according to the Fairfax-owned Australian Property Monitors.

The four-bedroom house is structurally sound but vandalised and strewn with refuse. "We had a really bad tenant – they just went extra feral overnight and took off. The place has got crap everywhere; a few windows smashed; a couple of doors broken," Mr Caruso said.

The over-the-top ad is one of many the agent has used to off-load hard-to-sell properties. "I've had a couple of others where I've just put a picture of a bulldozer. The ads just elicit heaps of enquiry," he said.

But using humour in a bid to turn a lemon into lemonade can have mixed results, too.

Last year the Melbourne firm Saint-John Estate Agents billed a townhouse next to a development site and plumbers' yard as the perfect home for "ladies [who] want tradies".

"If you are a single lady looking to meet a tradesman . . . this townhouse is for you," the ad read. "To lure him in there is a storage shed for all his tools. To cool you down after he has been around there is airconditioning on both levels."

The St Kilda property, which had been quoted at $490,000-$530,000, passed in for $471,000 and sold a few weeks later for $470,000. The campaign did win an industry award for its marketing and copywriting.